Civil rights leader Andrew Young returns 60 years after his beating in St. Augustine

Civil Rights leader Andrew Young returns to St. Augustine on Monday to honor St. Augustine’s Civil Rights demonstrations 60 years ago that played a pivotal role in the passage of the U.S. Civil Rights Act.

C.B. Hackworth, a longtime civil rights leader, documentary producer, and personal friend, said Young came to Augustine in 1964, not to march but to shut down the St. Augustine Civil Rights movement.

Young, a former ambassador to the United Nations, Atlanta mayor from 1982 to 1990, and the first African-American from Georgia to serve in the U.S. House, will headline ACCORD Inc.’s Monday film festival about St. Augustine’s civil rights history. The event includes book signings by authors of civil rights and other Black history books. It runs from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at St. Paul AME Church, 85 Martin Luther King Ave. and is free and open to the public.

Young’s documentary, "Crossing in St. Augustine," about 1964, will show at 6 p.m. at the church.

Violence was against the tenets of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights movement in the 1960s. Hackworth said St. Augustine’s demonstrations were concerning. Demonstrations went on day and night. Daytime demonstrators were women and their children because the men were at work. The movement feared for their safety of those women and children, and others involved at all times.

“It was a powder key,” Hackworth said. “Weapons were being confiscated from the marchers every night.”

Young’s plan changed when, upon arriving in St. Augustine, he saw the KKK and other protesters, according to Hackworth.

He led a group of marchers downtown from St. Paul Church on June 9, 1964, with the intent to pray in the plaza and then return to Lincolnville and disband. He held them back while he went to ask police to allow them to pray in the plaza.

Hackworth said Young was crossing at King Street and St. George Street to enter the plaza when he was beaten and kicked by white protesters.

“Andy said getting his ass whipped in St. Augustine was probably one of the most important times in his life,” Hackworth said.

St. Augustine’s continuing demonstrations, Young’s beating and national nightly news coverage got attention. It helped break the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act in the U.S. Senate., Hackworth said. It was signed into law July 2 by President Lyndon Johnson.

Civil Rights historian David Nolan notes the significance, too.

“Andrew Young, 92, got his baptism by fire in the civil rights movement in St. Augustine in 1964 when he led a march and was beaten in the downtown plaza area,” Nolan said. “A local policeman finally stopped his attackers and Young often wondered who the man was, so he could thank him.

“After his documentary came out in 2010, the man was identified as retired policeman James Petroglou — husband of St. Augustine's first woman mayor, Ramelle Petroglou — and Ambassador Young was able to present his thanks in person.”

Today one of the city's main downtown intersections is named "Andrew Young Crossing" in his honor, and bronze casts of his footprints lead into the historic plaza.

The event Monday, will be the largest gathering of Black authors in St. Augustine's history, including former Jacksonville Sheriff Nat Glover, former Jacksonville City Councilman Rodney Hurst and two of the children of the Rev. Thomas Wright, the father of the civil rights movement in St. Augustine.